When I was young, there was no feeling quite like walking into a Blockbuster on a Friday after school and walking aisle by aisle to select the perfect combination of movies for the weekend. It was a visceral tactile experience. You could even grab from a selection of theater-sized candy options at the checkout counter.
In the early 2000’s. Blockbuster was approached by a new upstart company called Netflix. Netflix proposed a merger. Netflix would take care of re-branding Blockbuster’s online presence while Blockbuster would continue to hold down the retail side. The Netflix team was laughed out of the room. The Blockbuster executives thought this whole online movie-watching craze was a niche idea. They were convinced people would always want to shop for their movies in a physical store and look at all the selections available before making their choice. By 2010, Blockbuster had filed for bankruptcy worth about $24 million while Netflix’s meteoric rise continued to around 13 billion! A cautionary tale. One more.
Kodak had always been in the film business. Most of us remember Kodak for their instant cameras and flapping those bulky photos around with our hands until a picture appeared. They were innovators and trend-setters in the film industry. In 2012, this American icon also failed for bankruptcy. Most think they failed because they missed the digital age. Actually, they didn’t. It’s a little known fact, but Kodak actually created the first digital camera in 1975! Steve Sasson took the camera to management and presented to them this new technology. They basically said, “That’s cute, don’t tell anyone about it.” The company entered decades of agonizing decline as the digital revolution gained traction. All the while, they had the answer all along sitting in a warehouse. They had invented digital cameras before anyone else was thinking about it. Another cautionary tale.
What do these stories have to do with the church? I would suggest, everything! The cautionary tale in both cases is ‘beware of the status quo!’ It is important for church leaders to learn from stories like this.
3 Warning Signs of Organizational Decline
Fear of Loss
Kodak lived in fear of cannibalizing their own lucrative film sales. Their problem wasn’t failure, just the opposite. They were a hostage to their own success. Things were going well. Numbers were up and to the right. They were clinging to what worked in the past instead of embracing a future that was a little more uncertain. Often greatest enemy of future success is current success. It’s easy to think, “Things are going fine, why should we change anything now?”
Many churches fall into the rut of simply trying to keep the people who are already attending happy. They live in fear that if we make any changes, people will leave. So don’t rock the boat. A fear of loss shows up as a fear of losing members, of losing money, of losing credibility. The danger is that all decisions about preaching, and music, and vision for the future, are all evaluated through the lens of, “Can we do this and still keep our members happy?” The fear of losing what we have, will always stifle the imagination of what could be.
Failure to read the times
Blockbuster never imagined a future where people wouldn’t want to leave their homes. They didn’t understand that it would soon be possible to browse movies on a screen and not a physical aisle. They didn’t understand that streaming was possible and that inventory costs could be taken to almost zero. They didn’t read the times.
Kodak assumed people would never part with physical photos. They were certain that this trendy digital moment would always return to “higher quality” physical photos. The didn’t account for the fact that everyone would have a high-quality camera in their pockets that would no long require film. It was a failure to read the trends of the times.
One of the twelve tribes of Israel was named Issachar. During the time of David’s struggle against Saul (1 Chronicles 12:32) there are chiefs of Issachar’s tribe who are faithful to David, and they are described as those who “understood the times and knew what Israel should do.” They understood current events and knew hot to interpret them to their own advantage. I think the modern church needs some more chiefs of Issachar.
I know it shows my age, but it still makes me shudder to know that we are much closer to 2050 than we are to 1990. Most churches are still running a 50-year-old church growth model that’s been hanging around since the 1970’s and 80’s. If I had come on staff at my church in 1995 and been told to run a model of ministry from 1945 I would have said, “see you later.” And yet we’re doing it today. It’s a failure to read the times.
I outlined some of the Christian trends in our country in a couple of previous posts. A Christianity Crisis in America and Wrestling with God about Reinventing the Church.
Pew research indicated in a series of studies over five years ago now, that Christianity in America is in rapid decline. Also church attendance among Christians is in rapid decline. In the last 25 years, America has experienced what is being called, The Great Dechurching. 40 million adults in America have “de-churched.” This is not a PR problem, it’s a discipleship problem. And ironically, it seems our country has never needed a strong and healthy church more than it does right now. Maybe the way we’re doing church is not working anymore. Maybe we need to read the times and make some changes.
Misunderstanding the Mission
Christian business guru Ken Blanchard said that any organization needs to only ask two questions to find their way back to true north. 1. What business are we in? And 2. How’s business? Blockbuster forgot that they were in the home movie business not the box store rental business. Kodak’s failure wasn’t a failure of technology, it wasn’t a failure of innovation, it was a failure of mission. They thought they were in the film business/, when in reality, they were in the memory-making business. They failed because they got stuck on the wrong mission.
As church leaders, we must remember that we’re not in the preaching business, we’re not in the worship service business, not in the kids ministry business, or the building maintenance business. We are unequivocally in the disciple-making business. Jesus gave us our marching orders with crystal clarity in the Great Commission in Matt. 28:19-20
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Many of our churches are dramatically overprogrammed and underdiscipled. Many of our Christians are overinspired and undertrained. We have confused making disciples with assimilating people into the church. My friend Dave Rhoades with Clarity House has said, the modern church as adopted a false but functional Great Commission. It goes something like this: “Go and make more worship attenders, baptizing them in the name of small groups, and teaching them to serve a couple times per month.” is that what Jesus died for? In many churches, we have misunderstood the mission. In fact, many churches have gone one step lower. The functional mission is, “Keep the doors open and the lights on.”
So, what should we do?
The Time for Tweaking is Over
Once digital photography began to take off, Kodak tried tweaking their old models, but it was too little too late. As churches, we can make tweaks with cosmetic changes, tweak the music, change the name of the church, try to get the pastor to grow more facial hair and wear skinny jeans.
But I would propose that it’s too little, too late for tweaking. It’s time to re-examine and re-evaluate everything we’re doing. We need to ask big questions like, is the Sunday morning formula of half singalong and half lecture working anymore? Is teaching without smaller training environments the wave of the future. Is our assimilation funnel that wants people to attend, connect, and serve still working? Or what does it look like to call, train, and send?
These are the questions we asking right now at our church. We’re not settling for cosmetic changes, but we’re making some big shifts in our model. You can follow along with our journey at dereksanford.com/reinventing church.
Shout out to Thom Shultz for some of the content and framework of this post.
